Stumbling blocks

30 September 2018
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 21B (RCL)
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Let me start by saying that when I was doing my CPE on the rehab floor at Mass General Hospital in the mid-1980s, there was a young man on the floor who was having his hand reconstructed. On the basis of this passage, and feeling guilt about what teenage boys do, he laid his right hand on a railroad track. I’ll never hear this passage in Mark without remembering that young man and the horrible guilt and pain this caused him. We need to use care in reading. Continue reading “Stumbling blocks”